Institute History
Description
Dialogue With A Woman Departed is a four-hour lyric-epic summation of a turbulent life and career. In form it is a cinematic love letter to the filmmaker’s late wife, Peggy Lawson, drawing together their experiences as artists, filmmakers and human beings engaged in the political struggles of the past 50 years. Hurwitz has produced an astonishingly poetic film , rich with lush and evocative metaphors for life, the mind and spirit. “The film’s theme relates to the growth of a woman’s grasp of her world, its many layers of experience. Its event is her lifetime, from the Depression to the Vietnam War. Its arc of feeling includes the world of nature, inner self, the environment of cities and the forces of history that moved through this ear and shaped our lives.” (Hurwitz).
With a body of work that spans five decades of radical filmmaking, Leo Hurwitz is the dean of the cinematic left. He began making films in the 30’s, documenting the Hunger Marches, the Scottsboro trials and the Spanish Civil War for the legendary Worker’s Film and Photo League. Blacklisted through the cold War, Horowitz continued to work independently and teach at New York University through the 60’s, Although as such a major effort Dialogue With A Woman Departed would seem to exhaust the creative efforts of any artist, Leo Hurwitz at age 76 is currently working on a new film.